17 Comments

Cookie Stuffing: An Affiliate Manger Viewpoint on a Recent Debate

Nov 5, 2007
by

As an affiliate manager there are days when I appreciate clear cut villains. You know, the black hat type that do drive-by installs on a consumer’s machine or who blatantly break CAN-SPAM laws. The tactics they employ are usually so brazen it is quite clear what industry rules are being broken and the reaction, industry wide, is usually equally concise when their tactics are exposed.

Personally, I thought what constituted cookie stuffing to be pretty clear cut. Cookie stuffing is the setting of an affiliate cookie on anything other than an affirmative consumer action in the form of a click. Seems pretty straight forward right? Well reactions to a debate stemming from a ShareASale Think Tank round table and spilling over into ABW discussions make the topic seem far less simple and far more like a quagmire.

The Tactic in Question

The consumer goes to an affiliate website. The affiliate site presents them with some content and a link that essentially says “Click me to see more content”. The consumer clicks. The affiliate site does take them to the content but also launches a new browser window via a pop-up/under which displays the merchant’s site whose advertising dollar is paying for the content thus setting an affiliate cookie on the consumer’s browser.

So what’s the problem? Didn’t the consumer get the content they were looking for? Well…yes. But the issue is the consumer didn’t ask to see the merchant’s site. The affirmative action is missing.

Now it can be argued that the consumer did express interest in the merchant’s site by asking to see more content; that the content provided by the affiliate is simply an extension of the merchant’s content; and that the affiliate is opening up a new browser as a “convenience” to the consumer. It can also be argued that such practices do constitute cookie stuffing; and if the consumer should purchase at some point during the lifetime of the cookie set by such tactics that the affiliate should not get credit for the sale. After all this is a CPA advertising model we are discussing NOT as CPM or CPV model.

What can’t be argued though is that the consumer didn’t ask for two browser windows to be opened. The consumer isn’t looking for a pop-up. Pop-ups are a bane. Companies make their living off of selling consumers new ways to block pop-ups. Using pop-ups in this fashion results in a poor consumer experience and from a merchant point of view not one I want associated with my site.

Why Coupon Sites Take Short Cuts to the Cookie Jar

Although the validity of such tactics can be debated, I feel it is important to understand the motivation of why affiliates employ such tactics. It is also important to note that while this kind of tactic is one commonly associated with coupon affiliates it can of course be employed by any affiliate.

There are three reasons why affiliates cookie stuff:

1) Lost Sales: Affiliates are worried about not getting credit for the sale and not being compensated for the time/energy/space they have allocated to the merchant’s ads. Coupon sites that display merchant codes are especially concerned because the consumer could in theory simply copy the code without clicking on the coupon then go directly to the merchant’s site.

2) Competitive Advantage: As the affiliate channel grows competition naturally increases. Affiliates sometimes feel compelled to employ questionable tactics to compete.

3) Everyone Else is Doing It, Why Can’t We: Ask any speeder on the highway who gets pulled over, everyone else was also speeding. They were just the ones to get caught. Affiliates seem to have the perception that everyone else is cheating. Affiliate Fair Play recently did an interesting study on the Prevalence of Forced Clicks in Coupon Sites. Frankly unless merchants or networks enforce their own rules there is not much motivation for affiliates to self police.

Merchant Apathy

I remember approaching the affiliate manager of a major electronics merchant during a conference. I had a list of affiliates who where cookie stuffing and every single one were in this merchant’s program. I was simply going to let him know. He looked at me and basically said he had “bigger fish to fry”. I hope he went out looking for some major black hat affiliate but my gut tells me he simply felt policing such tactics were not worth his time.

I think such attitude is indicative of the problem. Apparently coming from a major electronics merchant he wasn’t worried about such things as improving his EPC much less insuring content affiliates’ sales weren’t being poached by coupon affiliates. As an affiliate manager taking care of the health of your program is always worth your time.

Ways to Deal with the Tactic

1) Get Rid of the Coupon Code: If merchants have the technical ability to do so I highly recommend moving to “link only” coupons and removing the coupon code box from the shopping cart. Although these steps will not keep affiliates from cookie stuffing, they do address the legitimate concern of coupon affiliates who are worried about the consumer walking away with a code without clicking a link. Furthermore, switching to “link only” gives merchants better control over distribution of the coupon itself. It also helps increase overall conversion because consumers aren’t leaving the shopping cart to search for coupons AND less affiliates are popping windows in hopes of snagging a sale.

2) Enforce the Rules: In the discussions I have seen there has been a call for networks and merchants to “clarify” the rules. I am not sure this is necessary. I think the only reason the rules are “fuzzy” to begin with is due to the lack of enforcement. Both networks and merchants are culpable in this matter. Merchants because of their over reliance on networks and networks because of their fear of somehow impact/limiting transactions. Of course being consistent and not punitive is key.

3) Stay Informed: Seems simple enough but apathy again plays a big factor. Fact is that tactics change all the time. If you want your affiliate program to remain healthy it is good to stay on top of the trends that are out there.

Hopefully that helps clear up the quagmire a little. As for me, I am off to go after some of the more “usual suspects”; perhaps somebody has a new dirty downloadable I can kick out.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing
  • eugeniu

    1) Get Rid of the Coupon Code: – your solution is wrong in my opinion , I don't see any reason for affiliates not to open popups or iframes to get the cookie . My solution is to give affiliates the option to generate/autogenerated custom coupon codes that will be associated with their account.

  • http://www.popshops.com Angel Djambazov

    I disagree Eugeniu,

    Handling autogenerated custom coupon codes that tie into an affiliate account would help with one aspect of the problem. But wont help with cart abandonment/conversion issues. Customers will still leave the cart to search for coupons.

    With a link only solution not only can you greatly improve abandonment rates but it is easier to manage the coupon. And since link structure is flexible you could easily associate a parameter in the link to the affiliate's account.

  • http://www.rhinofish.com Pat Grady

    The coupon box is the crux of this issue for me, creating a leak that begs to be filled. Without the box part of the discussion, switching to links alone wouldn't seem to me to address cart abandonment at all.

    Seems that your reply to the earlier poster means you're also advocating removing the coupon box as well, as part of your soultion. Could you please clarify your position regarding the box? Oops, wait… on my second read through, I can see you've plainly said that, remove the box / prompt.

    With some codes being used in snail direct mail and other marketing efforts, do you think many merchants would remove the box?

    Further, do you think after a short while, consumers would become conditioned to pop open a new window and search, even though there's no box prompting them, so that they could search among the hoards of available link coupons?

    If that new conditioning came to be (or if the box is or isn't removed), I think there'd still be coupon affiliates with navigation elements and prompts to "see" the coupon links setting cookies for most visitors before they've seen worthiness or applicability… so I always tend to focus on the affiliate behavior and to a much lesser extent, how exactly the merchant induced it. In my mind, a merchant concerned with cart abandonment would be equally interested in evaluating the value of commissioning coupon affiliates and their variety of traffic and cookie tactics.

    I think someday couponing will evolve into a separate channel altogether, as I see its value as distinctly different than other incremental affiliate activities.

    Great post, you've made me think!

  • http://speedypin.com Eric Itzkowitz

    It is my experience that using unique URLs containing a coupon code is much better for one's customers (a better user experience). Ultimately, handling couponing in this way enables your customers to give you their money faster and easier (less clicks necessary). If/where possible, merchants can also tell the customer that the coupon they are offering is the best available, which could further discourage a customer from abandoning their loaded card to go in search of a better coupon.

  • http://www.popshops.com Angel Djambazov

    Hi Pat,

    Removing the coupon box is key to implementing "link only" coupons. Back at Onlineshoes I had link only coupons running for nine months before I left. What we did was suppress the coupon box for LinkShare traffic. We didn't remove it entirely because there were ongoing snmail efforts. I think no one will be surprised to hear that coupon conversion improved and cart abandonment in the affiliate channel decreased.

    What I was surprised about was the decrease in customer service issues regarding coupons. I credit this in part to coupon codes not "running amok" in public forums and in part to our ability on the merchant side to clearly step-by-step inform the consumer what offer they have qualified for. As Eric mentioned in his comment this lead to better customer experience. Of course close communication with affiliate partners is still crucial to managing coupon distribution. But if you don't communicate with your core distribution partners I do have to wonder why you are working with them?

    As for conditioning, I think you are probably right. Affiliates who want to cheat will still find ways to do so. I agree that affiliate behavior should be focused on and I agree with your implied point that merchants should better evaluate their partners.

  • Randy Morris

    How about this for an idea, Use the http protocol (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html) to set/send information to the merchant website. On the merchant end, have a script look at the header information and set session or cookies or whatever the merchant needs to do. It far more difficult to spoof http protocol information than to get a person to set information based on link clicks or cookies set.
    In a very basic sense of it, the system would work by using the request-header field to set the domain of the affiliate to be credited for sales. Links could be created via a script with parameters to address which coupon offer and the style of the link. This way all three back end participants (affiliate link providing website, affiliate program provider and merchant) in the transaction would have a way of being involved and verify performance. A second script would set the parameter of the merchant website to recognize proper affiliate to credit sales to. This way the actual mechanics would be transparent to the users in all respects. Unless they took the time to use a sniffer and then spoof the http packets or edit the http protocol layer, there would be no way to falsify this information. And lets face it, using cookies and javascript and query stringed links is very last decade. Why deal with all the nuances of what does the browser support ect. All browsers support http inherently.
    I know it would take some time to get companies like linkshare to get on board. The nature of having to understand http to understand the benefits and how it would solve problems is an obvious obstacle. But I am asking if those who do understand think there are any down sides to this idea?

  • http://www.popshops.com Angel Djambazov

    Hi Randy,

    If I followed your technical logic string correctly (not 100% sure I did because my technical expertise is only fair), the down side I see is that your model would only allow for single session commissions. The benefit of cookies is being able to track customers who come back days later, even months. Not a lot of affiliates would go for the single session option (of course there are programs like that use single session just saying it's not popular among affiliates).

  • http://www.flowmark.co.uk Flowmark

    I've often found it most comfortable to think of the black hatters as everyone else and me to be the wonderfully innocent white hatter. ;)

  • Kurt Lohse

    Angel,

    Good post. I am pretty sure Randy's suggestion would address the single session concern. All the merchant/network would have to do is adjust the script to allow as many qualified sessions as they wish under any criteria they choose, e.g. x number of days, or x number of visitor sessions. The script itself would is flexible enough to handle just about any concern.

  • http://easss.com/toys/index.htm Chung Wu

    i think coupon code is useful that it should not be replaced entirely

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Pat, You said – "Further, do you think after a short while, consumers would become conditioned to pop open a new window and search, even though there's no box prompting them, so that they could search among the hoards of available link coupons?"

    This is a very important comment as consumer behavior from the accounts I have worked on is showing that consumers are becoming conditioned to search for a coupon code for products they are attempting to purchase off the merchants site if they see a merchant coupon box, which leads them to affiliate sites which are using the natural search and paid search terms to attract the attention of consumers who are searching for merchant coupon codes after they are already in the sales funnel on the merchants cart. This is an example of how astute affiliates use coupon codes in natural and paid search to attract consumers to their sites for merchant programs who have a coupon box within their sales funnel. Merchants would be well advised to mimic the display of their coupon codes and add it to their list of keywords for consumer acquisition through both paid and natural search.

    Angel excellent post!

  • http://foliovision.com/weblog WordPress SEO

    Heather is right on about using coupons as an additional SEO tactic.

    I don't know how you can reliably coupon people with just links. You'll end up with all kinds of customer service issues.

    Perhaps we can find a way to pay both the cookie and the coupon with reduced payout on each side when the two are in conflict.

    It doesn't seem fair that non-coupon affiliates should be subsidising couponed affiliates.

  • Jonathan (Trust)

    "I don't know how you can reliably coupon people with just links. You'll end up with all kinds of customer service issues."

    You'd actually have less and it's good for everybody. Shoppers would just have to click a link, not write down, remember or copy the code. For affiliates, coupon links yield higher conversions, that's a fact. And it also helps coupon sites because they get a lot of people just going to the site to copy the code.

    "It doesn't seem fair that non-coupon affiliates should be subsidising couponed affiliates."

    Actually, more the other way around. There are a lot of sites that don't post coupons and shoppers to that site end up at checkout without a coupon, pop open another browser, find a coupon site and just copy the code. The coupon site help close the sale. Coupon links are the way to go.

  • http://www.affiliatefairplay.com Kellie

    Good post Angel. One thing I do find interesting is that while many discussions start with talking about the practice of domain-bound "cookie stuffing" on coupon sites, they quickly morph into discussing issues of the value of coupon affiliates, management/distribution issues of coupons by merchants and content vs. coupon affiliate issues. It's happened in this tread, the discussion at ThinkTank and other online discussions. I get the feeling that many have more concerns about other issues than the actual cookie stuffing practice; that the cookie stuffing is the spring board to the other issues. They really are separate issues. The "cookie stuffing" is a compliance issue for networks and merchants and should be dealt with separately than the other issues. Not that the other issues don't warrant discussion and shouldn't be addressed. They are just separate, and thus handled differently. Although, I really don't think affiliates who are cookie stuffing are helping their cause much with regards to the other issues.

    On Randy's post regarding HTTP tracking. I assume you mean using the HTTP REFERRER (or REFERER as w3.org calls it). I'm not aware of any other HTTP HEADER that could be used, so correct me if my assumption is wrong. There are already a few platforms out there that use such a system. The discussion periodically comes up. It has not gained any degree of wide-spread support. There are several legitimate traffic referral where the REFERRER header is blank or empty, thus would not track. An example that comes quicly to mind is email promotion. Some types of js linking will not pass any REFERRER information. Most Networks already do capture this information however and it is passed onto merchant's in reporting, primarily for compliance use. I am having more and more merchant's tell me that are seeing no data for that field for increaasing amounts of affiliate traffic. The point being that the method isn't viewed as being any more reliable than the traditional cookie based tracking.

  • http://forum.abestweb.com/forumdisplay.php?f=397 Chuck Hamrick

    Its the merchants responsibility to police the coupon affiliates not the network. Coupon affiliates in any mature program are the highest ranked sites for the merchants coupons. Merchants don't do a good job of advertising their coupons and many times affiliates do. Shoppers have figured out the Internet several years ago and we act surprised when they open another browser to find a coupon code. If you don't offer an affiliate coupon code then don't show the coupon box when an affiliate refers the visitor. If you do offer coupon codes then work with your affiliates to leverage them, kick out the cheaters and build your brand. There is nothing more ridiculous than a merchant who has codes, restricts the PPC bidding and offers a link that doesn't provide a coupon code.

  • http://foliovision.com/weblog WordPress SEO

    "It doesn't seem fair that non-coupon affiliates should be subsidising couponed affiliates."

    Actually, more the other way around. There are a lot of sites that don't post coupons and shoppers to that site end up at checkout without a coupon, pop open another browser, find a coupon site and just copy the code. The coupon site help close the sale. Coupon links are the way to go.

    Hello Jonathan,

    In your hypothetical example, who gets the sale…

    1. The affiliate who brought the shopper to the table (i.e. site).
    2. The coupon site who closed the deal?

    It's more than likely that there is a better coupon out there than what the first affiliate has (if any) and the surfer will find the better coupon and submit it.

    Think of Dreamhost for instance. The affiliate can choose the quantity of the discount (down to zero income for the affiliate) up to $97.

    So the only coupons being used in the end are the maximum discount ones.

    A race to the bottom and there is no longer any point in promoting Dreamhost at all.

  • Dan Holland

    One thing that I always find missing from this argument is the marketing aspect. Being new to the game I thought it was a good marketing idea to pop the window "once the customer has asked for more information" via a click. To me, who better to close the sale other than the merchant with their page and product displayed right there for you?

    I viewed it as a correlation to the brick and mortar world where you're standing outside the store with your sign trying to get people to stop and look at your ad. Once they do that you open the door to entice that person in to complete the sale.

    I can understand that the coupon code stealing is an issue but I wonder what percentage of the people are looking for other codes versus just shopping and your popup of the store was what tipped the scales of that buyer actually deciding to buy?

    I'll go along with the industry consensus but I wanted to put this out there as I have never seen this viewpoint from anyone.